Martyna Barbara Golik is a brilliant product and textile designer who knows how to convey her contagious enthusiasm and joyful creativity. Strongly focused on exploring senses and emotions, her design is a combination of playful tactility, texture and colors. An experimentation meaningfully expressed through Martyna’s storytelling journey, creating a common language within two of her biggest passions: food and design.

Looking back at Martyna’s background, it’s easy to get how her commitment to art happened to be a natural path. Fervent exploration’s aficionado, the polish-born designer dabbled fashion, scenography and painting before discovering textile design. Pushing textile beyond its usual limit as a simple part of design, she challenges it as a true communication medium — « What is essential in what I do is researching and finding the question I want to answer, something that will keep me going during the whole process of making. I think I start a project by acting like an artist and later on I become more of a designer ».

Eager to learn more, to catch a new breath and a fresh perspective on design and life, she settled in Copenhagen. Travelling, finding out about other cultures, customs and habits, plays a huge part into Martyna’s open-minded inspiration. From the contrasted yet nostalgic character city of Warsaw, deeply touched by the history of Berlin and the architectural style of Melbourne capturing the essence of its immigrant history, the blissfulness and design greatness of Copenhagen, to the mix of Indian spirit and Western influences of Bombay’s smells, colors and sounds… Each city echoes in her work, wether it is in the shape of the design or in its colors — « I love bright colors of India (pink, orange, yellow) together with soft, pastel-like colors of Scandinavia ».

The sensory aspect at the core of Martyna’s creative approach balancing art and design is perfectly illustrated by her final project at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts - School of Design — « Touch That Taste! ».
For a long time she has been nurturing the desire of blending food experience with design before coming up with the exciting idea of translating the taste of food into touch and vision. Setting up an innovative process, she conducted her research like a rigorous yet fun scientist: « I asked a group of ten people to undergo a synesthesia-inspired experiment where they had to smell and taste the representatives of five main tastes, and tell me about their visual and tactile experiences ». The data she collected from this experience, followed by an extensive material and techniques’ research performed with ultra talented people, she created a collection of five interior objects, retranscription of the five main tastes — sweet, salty, sour, bitter & umami.
« A collection that is telling a story about how abstract experiences could be turned into actual objects ».

As food being a strong momentum for Martyna, her next and thrilling step will take place in as small Kerala’s village (Southern India): revolving around food traditions ans geographical aspects, she will express her story through woven and tufted rugs she will create in-situ. Her main wonder for food also involves an awe for great cooks — as a matter-of-fact, the only series she watches is the documentary format « Chef’s table » created by David Gelb, the director of « Jiro dreams of sushi » — revealing her dream of working with a japanese cook, her collaborations with Karlos Ponte, and her candid admiration for the Argentinian chef Francis Mallmann: « I like his passion for creating and experimenting. I would like to be like him when I grow up! »

Down-to-earth, she explains how design increasing popularity also became a challenge for designers to create something of equal importance in matter of functionality and inner subject, underlining the necessity to also pay attention to meaningful, educating, conscious design. She inwardly believes that balance is the key of being in harmony with everything we do and that we must bring the best out of it. « I would say that everybody has to find their way of creating. If the “form follows function” would be the only way to go, I’m afraid that we could end up being quite bored. But if it would be the other way around, our everyday life and everyday routines could be pretty much distorted, or at least challenged. »

Inspired by the people surrounding her or she add the chance to met, she picked three up-and-coming talents as the ones to watch: Studio Swine (product design), for their beautifully poetic projects based on constant exploration of cultures, histories and traditions, Ellinor Ericsson (furniture designer) who crafts scandinavian design with a twist, and Fernando Laposse (artist) who experimentally uses sugar to create objects.« Dziękuję! » to you too, Martyna! (editor’s note: thank you in polish)